Chantelle Nicholson’s vegan recipe for grilled spring onions with roast garlic and chickpea mash and dill vinaigrette | The new vegan

Grilled onions are ever so underrated – in summer, I love them piled on to the barbecue, but their nutty sweetness is a great addition to just about any meal at any time of year. I’m also a huge fan of roast garlic, which is a great thing to have to hand at all times: just peel, roast and cover with good oil, and it will keep for almost as long as you can resist using it all up. And then we come to dill, whose zesty acidity is the best possible friend to today’s dish, the first of my recipes while I, excitedly, stand in for the uber-talented Meera Sodha for the next four weeks.

Grilled spring onions with roast garlic and chickpea mash and dill vinaigrette

Prep 10 min
Cook 35 min
Serves 4

1 x 400g tin chickpeas, drained (240g net weight; save the liquid for making mayonnaise or meringues)
1 garlic bulb, separated into cloves and peeled
3 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp white miso paste
Salt
3 bunches spring onions, trimmed
1 tbsp cornflour
2 tbsp vegetable oil
½ tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp sesame seeds

For the dill vinaigrette
1 small bunch dill (about 20g)
100ml rapeseed oil
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp dijon mustard

Put 50g of the chickpeas in a sieve and set them aside to dry out a little.

Heat the oven to 190C (170C fan)/375F/gas 5. Put the garlic on an oven tray, splash over tablespoon of rapeseed oil, toss to coat, then roast for 10-12 minutes, until golden (ideally, make a batch in advance when your oven is already on for another use). Transfer the roast garlic to a blender, add the olive oil and miso paste, and blitz until almost smooth.

Tip the remaining 190g chickpeas into the blender, add 125ml water and blitz again, until almost smooth. Scrape the garlic and chickpea mixture into a medium saucepan and cover.

Put all the ingredients for the vinaigrette in a blender with a couple of spoonfuls of cold water to loosen, then blitz until almost smooth and season with salt to taste.

As mentioned above, spring onions work brilliantly on a barbecue, but they’ll be fine cooked indoors on a griddle pan or large frying pan, too, or even roasted at 230C (210C fan)/450F/gas 8. Either way, coat them in the remaining two tablespoons of rapeseed oil, season with salt and cook, turning as necessary, for eight to 10 minutes, until softened and slightly charred.Dry the reserved chickpeas in the sieve as best you can – a gentle rub in a clean tea towel should do the trick – then arrange them in a single layer on a flat tray. Sift the cornflour all over the top and season generously with salt. Put the vegetable oil in a large frying pan on a medium heat. When it’s almost smoking, tip in the chickpeas from the tray, scatter over the cumin and sesame seeds, and cook, shaking the pan continuously over the heat, for four or five minutes, until the chickpeas are crisp and golden brown all over.

To serve, gently warm the chickpea mash – depending on how long it’s been sitting around for, you may need to add a touch of water to loosen it a little – then pile on to a large serving plate. Top with the grilled onions, drizzle over the dill vinaigrette and finish with the crisp chickpeas scattered all over.